Book Review: Between

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’ll all have a happy and healthy 2013! J May this be a good year for writing!

But for now it is time for another book review!

Between, the debut novel of Kerry Schafer, is definitely one of the most interesting fantasy books I have read in a long while—in a very good way.
As someone who loves readying fantasy I know the genre pretty well and I have never come across something quite like this. The story was compelling, surprising, rather horrifying and positively gruesome at times and lots of fun to read.

Dragons, dreams, princes, evil Queens, magic, warriors—Between has it all. The story stars with our heroin, Vivian who is working a shift at the E.R. when a teenage boy is brought in with severe burn wounds that Vivian immediately recognizes as having come from a dragon.  Here is where the pretty disgusting bit starts (for the faint hearted, do not worry. Between isn’t a gory book. It just has it’s moments. They fit the story well and it’s just a book. You’ll probably be OK haha :p)--but disguisting because the boy's skin just melts away.

Normally I wouldn’t think twice about these kind of moments but they were written so vividly—as was the entire book—that I couldn’t help but see everything that happened to Vivian very clearly and realistically in my mind. I love it when a book just grabs you right out of your seat and drags you into a world of wonder, and this is definitely that kind of book.

There was one character in the book that I, when I first read about him, viewed as weird and negative (because it stood out and didn’t seem to fit) but he very soon melted my heart and I started to love the little guy: Poe, a penguin—yep you heard me. Penguin. The cutest, smartest, bravest little penguin I have ever read about (although to be fair I haven’t read that many books with penguins in them. Still.)

Another character, Zee, I couldn't resist: a painter and bookshop owner by day and a warrior in his dreams at night.

Did I also mention that this book is filled with dragons? Not the cute be-my-best-friend-and-we-will-ride-the-skies-together kind of dragon that you find in a lot of books these days, but old-fashioned really nasty I’ll-bite-your-head-off-and-toast-you-for-dinner kind of dragons.

Other than that I have to say that I really like the humour, eventually had to laugh real hard about the fact that Vivian seems to spend about 20% of the book completely naked and found the whole Wakeworld / Dreamworld / Between was very interesting and I loved reading all about it and how Vivian handles the fact that these worlds exists and that she can movie between them.

In short a book that I would definitely recommend, especially if you are interested in dreams, penguins or just want something different for a change.

Between will be in stores 29 January and I suggest you go check it out!

Go to kerryschafer.com for more information! :)

I will try to make these book reviews a weekly or at least a twice a month thing! I hope you like them!

And also this year:

Keep Writing!
Xx Noortje